[IxDA Discuss] Where are all the designers?

[Anjali R Arora]

I think Dave has put this very well. This fact is often times overlooked in our focus on the obvious competitive elements ( we'll do it faster, cheaper, etc)

This was what i was telling a colleague this morning explaining my skepticism of UXD managers who have not practiced the discipline themselves. I can't tell you how many times in my contract work I have worked with UX team leads who are clueless about how designers create; hence, when push comes to shove, the shove usually being absurd deadlines or pushback from developers, design is usually the first casualty. More so when the UX manager himself/herself has no convictions regarding design, coming as they are from the project management side or development side of things. The latter to my mind is also a huge problem with the state of the industry right now: not enough qualified UX managers out there.

-Anjali

----- Original Message -----
From: dave malouf <dave.ixd at gmail.com>

> I realize that small orgs like yours have limited resources, but
> maybe that just means, stick w/ sr. staff. the "cold water"
> approach is just "mean" IMHO and as human centered empathetic
> people, you'd think we would want to treat all aspects of our human
> capital with the same respect we give to our end-users, no? 
> 
> I don't mean to really pick on Andrei here. Way! too many
> organizations big and small do not have good career path planning and
> follow the "cold water" model. It just leads to failure time and
> time again, and actually becomes a drain on management resources in
> other ways, as well as direct out-of-pocket expenses due to overly
> high attrition rates. The Ad World is famous for Jr. level burnout in
> the creative space.
>